Kerrang front cover

Language:  Kerrang uses similar language to NME as it follows a particular colour scheme  of red,white and black and the front cover uses bold and large fonts to attract the target audience's attention. The front cover shows conventions of a rock music magazine with the main photograph enlarged to cover the majority of the page, and additional photographs coming accross the magazine at the bottom. The text conventionally is placed over the picture of the artist, which indicates to the audience that the text is relating to the artist. Kerrang also follows conventions by having additonal photographs and articles on different artists advertised on the front cover, aside from the main article. They advertise the smaller articles with the use of banners which is conventional as the audience wants to see as many artists that is possible featured in the magazine.

Institution: Kerrang is produced by Bauer media, which is a big mainstream company producing various types of magazines. This means that Kerrang is possibly in competition with NME, although the target audience is slightly different as Kerrang focuses on rock music rather than indie. This means that Kerrang may be a potention competitor for my magazine. Kerrang is not only a magazine but is also a radio station, TV Channel, has a website and has its own award ceremony. This means that people who listen to or watch Kerrange will then go and buy the magazine, and vise versa, therefore creating profit for Bauer media.

Ideology: The ideology on this front cover appears to be the promotion of excitement, as it says things like "Metallica storm the UK!" which with the word "storm" and the use of an exclamation mark indicates that Kerrang is fast paced and up to date.  Another example is the phrase "Northern Uproar!" used to describe the main band featured. This shows that that the band featured are the latest thing happening, which is what the target audience what to see. The masthead also looks rough because it is in black and has jaggered edges, which indicates that the magazine is a rock magazine because the rock genre is often associated with being rough. Also, the black which is part of the colour scheme indicates that the magazine is quite dark, and it is also a colour which is associated with rock as a lot of the artists wear dark clothing. The red in the colour scheme indicates danger, as rock is often associated with risk and danger as the majority of the artists are streotyped to be drug and alcohol addicts.

Audience: Kerrang describes their target audience as Individually minded, independant of thought and muscially experienced, an audience defined by attitude, passion and loyalty. This front cover gives the impression that the target audience is mainly male as it is dominated with male artists, and all the articles featured appear to be about male artists. It is also listed under Men's Interest on Bauer Media's website. The front cover indicates that the target audience would be young people as it has been designed to look exciting and fast paced, which suits the personalities of the audience. However, Kerrang's age group of the target audience appears to be a bit bigger than NME's because Kerrange features artists that are already well established and that have been around for years, whereas NME features new and upcoming artists who are generally quite young.

Representation:  The first thing I noticed about the representation of Kerrang's front cover is the colour scheme of red,white and black which is used. The red and black represent the magazine to be quite dangerous.  Also the use of exclamation marks represents the magazine as exciting. Another aspect which represents danger is that the majority of the artists featured on the front cover appear to have tatoos, which makes them fit into the stereotype that is associated with rock musicians. The magazine is represented as rough because the masthead and large font on the page have jaggered edges, and also the common stereotype of people with alot of tatoos is that they have a rough personality. As it features a lot of articles and different pictures on the front cover the magazine is represented as having a lot going on, which reflects the target audience because they are expected to be the type of people that have a lot going on in their lives.